When Next We Meet
by Neva
Summary: Set way back at the beginning of the first season, here's a look at first days in Bayville from opposing viewpoints. Slight Lance/Kitty.


A/N: This is my interpretation of what happened directly after "X-Impulse". Lance/Kitty is not a dead pairing, do you hear me? Part of this fic can also be found, in very slightly altered form, in my anti-Xavier story "Bright Darkness."

Disclaimer: The Evolution Couple That Surpasses All, and all characters connected with them, belong to Marvel and Kids WB.

**

There wasn't much to pack. Except for his prized possession, the second-hand (third-hand? fourth-hand?) electric guitar that his foster parents hadn't known about until several weeks after he'd bought it, everything could go in one duffel bag. Even so, he spread his stuff over the rest of the seat. He didn't want someone else trying to sit down next to him, either pretending like he wasn't there or trying to make half-assed conversation, even though whoever-it-was would probably never see him again.

And besides, what would he say? _I just trashed my school using my weird power to create earthquakes just by concentrating. Some blue lady offered to move me to a new town where I could have a new start and hopefully be treated better than I was back there? And it all started — or at least came together — when I came face to face with the first person in ages who would look at me and not run away or try to kick my ass… and then I literally dropped the ceiling down on her?_

No. No. He would not think about that. Done was done, and couldn't be fixed. Lance slouched down a little further in his seat and folded his arms, staring straight ahead at nothing.

**

Kitty shifted in her seat on the jet, trying her best to settle down. It wasn't that the seats weren't comfortable, but she was having some trouble keeping ahold of herself. She had flown in airplanes before, but never like this. Never in almost complete silence, the only other passengers being the mysterious bald guy who, after the initial uneasiness he had caused her, had been surprisingly kind and understanding, and the redheaded girl who had helped to save all their lives. She looked to be only a couple years older than Kitty herself, yet there seemed to be a world of differences between them. Jean, for that was her name, was poised, self-confident, articulate, and seemed to have a handle on her… weirdness.

Her _powers_, Katherine. Get used to thinking along those lines.

She looked around wildly. Was she hearing things? Must be. It totally would surprise her if she was going crazy. After all, she had gone to sleep last night as a normal girl, a borderline brainiac and athletic klutz, a good daughter and good student whose biggest worry was steering clear of girls like Riley and Amy who seemed to hate her for no apparent reason. She had woken up on the floor of the basement, and from that instant, nothing was ever the same again.

She considered Professor Xavier and Jean. _ I trust them_, she had told her parents, but had she said that because it was true, or because she was desperate? After all, she had trusted Lance, too, and look where that had gotten her.

Unexpectedly, she blinked back tears. What was _that_ all about? She had expected to be furious with him, and she was. She expected to be tired and frightened and, already, a little homesick, and she was all those things. If she cried, it would be because she was going to miss her parents and had no idea where this ride was taking her. As far as _he_ was concerned, she had lost _nothing_, and she didn't care if he had died in the cave-in he'd caused. She didn't care if she never saw him again.

**

Well, there was a promising start if there ever was one: Crazy Blue Lady — or Mystique, as she was supposed to call her — had provided the money for the bus ticket and for the taxi that carried him to the house at the edge of town. It was obviously old, unnecessarily fancy, and at once too large for just three people.

The third answered Crazy Blue Lady's call of, "Toad, get down here _now_!" with, "Coming, Boss-Lady, keep your scales on!" He was small and scrawny, obviously a few years younger than Lance, with scraggly hair that hung in his face and couldn't seem to make up his mind between blond and brown. He paused halfway down the stairs and cocked his head at the newcomer. "Who we got here?"

"Toad, this is Avalanche, your new teammate. Please try to keep from making sarcastic comments while I explain the rules."

_Did she just call him Toad? Well, I mean, she did call me Avalanche, and herself Mystique, but still…_ "Is that your real name?" he blurted before their "new advisor" could say anything else. If looks could kill, she could have dispatched Lance in a matter of seconds. But she let the smaller boy speak for himself.

"If you gotta ask, you'll never know," he declared. When he hopped the rest of the way down the stairs and perched on the banister, hands between his spread knees, the nickname was instantly self-explanatory, but he continued anyway. "It's what she started calling me. Name's Todd Tolansky."

_Speak when you're spoken to, Lancey! I've been raising you to have better manners than this!_ Although the words didn't trigger a particularly pleasant memory, the resulting habit was a hard one to break. "Lance Alvers," he replied.

"Quiet down, both of you, and let me speak," Mystique ordered. She turned to her new charge. "The first thing you must be aware of, above all, is that your life as you know it is over…"

**

It was clear that Kitty was going to have this room to herself. There was another bed, but the space was unmistakably un-lived-in. She'd have to rectify that; she didn't think she could stand to fall asleep in this place until it looked and felt a _little_ more like home.

Why was this so _hard_ for her? It wasn't like she would never see her parents again, now that they were more or less okay with what she was. _Probably more okay with it than _I_ am_, she reflected. It wasn't like she had any serious problem with any of her new housemates (when the one with the German accent had kissed her hand in greeting, she had actually _smiled_ despite herself and despite the shock of being greeted so gallantly by someone who looked like a fuzzy blue elf). It wasn't like she was nervous about attending a new school; if it was even a fraction better than her last one, it would be more than she had hoped for.

Mentally decorating with her eyes (posters on the wall and on the closet door, books on the shelf, laptop on the desk) she flung herself onto the bed…

… and, after a dizzying second, found herself on the floor, wedged between the carpet and the bedsprings.

She swore silently to herself and inched on her stomach out from under the bed, like a reptile. For a second she lay face-up, staring at nothing, thinking of nothing.

Then she sat up and touched her face. Solid. She patted herself down. Shoulders. Stomach. Legs. Feet. All solid.

Katherine, when you're settled in, come downstairs, please. There are some things we would like to go over with you?

She blinked. There it was again. "What?"

She _felt_ someone smiling in her mind, funny as that sounded. Oh — of course. The guy who ran the Institute could read minds. _Okay, fine. I'll be right there,_ she thought, trying not to shudder, and hoped she'd gotten through to him.

**

"You want me to wear _that_?" Lance practically squawked.

"Is there a problem with it?"

He took a long look at the suit laid out on the chair. It was practically form-fitting, and with the glass face shield added, put him in mind of some sort of bizarre space-cowboy outfit. "Nothing's wrong, Boss-La — I mean Mystique," he corrected himself quickly. Damn, was that Toad kid contagious or what? "I just don't know where the —" He caught himself again. _Sucking up_, he thought. _Never would have expected it of myself_. "Where I'm supposed to wear something like that."

"In battle, obviously," Mystique said patiently.

"Right, right. With the Xavier Institute kids."

"They're more than that," his advisor explained for the second or third time. "They're the X-Men, and they're our enemies."

"Why? I mean, what'd they ever do to us?"

Her expression darkened again. "Would you like to be on the first bus back to Northbrook?" she asked with false sweetness.

Lance considered it. Forget for a second whether his foster parents would take him back, or where he would go if they didn't. Forget that this lady had a serious attitude and Toad seemed to live to annoy people. Here he had a room to himself, a nice warm bed, and people who might actually respect him once they knew what he was made of. More importantly, he had a new start, a purpose besides mere survival — even though nobody had made it completely clear what that purpose _was_. "Nope," he said at last.

"Then you don't _question_. You just _do_. Are we clear?" Before he could answer, "This wouldn't by any chance be a result of my telling you that a certain Katherine Pryde was recently recruited to the X-Men, would it?"

_Katherine Pryde_… oh. "You mean Kitty? Hell, no!"

"Are you positive? Because if you're tempted to re-enact _West Side Story_, you'd be wise to remember how it ended." She gave a pointed glance at the battle suit, then turned on her heel and left the room.

Lance had never seen _West Side Story_, but knew that Mystique probably wasn't referring to any kind of happy ending. Not that one had even entered his mind when he'd first spoken to Kitty. He wasn't even going to try to deny his immediate physical attraction to her — the girl was _hot_, all anxious blue eyes and slender curves and masses of dark hair pulled back from that perfect face. He'd pushed it away quickly… for the time being. He had needed her for other purposes, and he hadn't let himself think about how wonderful it would feel to take that hair out of its ponytail and run his fingers through it, to kiss her, pull her close, hold her… protect her? From what? From those girls on the track field? From her parents? From Xavier? From herself?

And if he'd just been using her, why had the look on her face when she realized he'd betrayed her _hurt_ so much? No, more than hurt, _seared_, filled him with remorse and anger that just kept filling him until he had to release it somehow. And now he was miles from everything he'd ever known, and he was clueless as to why he was feeling what he was feeling. Given the circumstances, and what his future looked like, he shouldn't have been feeling anything at all.

**

The images were displayed on the computer one by one. "As of now, Mystique is the governing force in the Brotherhood," Professor Xavier informed them. "However, she is recruiting followers of her cause as surely as we are. Followers such as Sabretooth." An image of a huge, savage man-creature with long, stringy yellow hair popped on the screen. "Or Toad." A scrawny, vaguely green boy whom everyone else seemed to recognize. "And their newest recruit, Avalanche."

Kitty bit back a gasp just in time. The figure on the screen had been outfitted in a grayish-green uniform complete with a ridiculous-looking glass bowl covering his head, but the face beneath the glass belonged to none other than Lance. She hadn't given much thought to what had happen to them after the office had collapsed -- part of her had even hoped that he hadn't survived. The way he had used her still burned like acid on the surface of her memory. "They aren't... right here in town?" she asked.

"You will doubtlessly see the two younger members in the halls of your high school," Xavier answered. "They are serving the Brotherhood," he repeated, in case she hadn't gotten it the first time, "our enemies, and it is doubtful that they will leave you alone. It would be best not to retaliate, however. They do not care about the opinions of ordinary people."

"If they try to strike during school, what should we do?" Scott Summers wanted to know. (His name sounded like the name of a character on _Saved By The Bell_, but there was nothing typical or very funny that the eye-beams that could demolish everything in their path if he took off those sunglasses of his)

"If you have no choice, you must do what will endanger the least amount of people. Otherwise, stay as far away from them as possible." Was it Kitty's imagination, or was he looking directly at her when he said this?

She stared at the image of the screen for a second. Of all the people she'd expected to run into here in Bayville, in her new life, he was the last. The rendering of her savior-turned-betrayer on the screen did its very best to make that face look ruthless and cruel, but that obvious didn't work if the viewer had seen it when it was blank with surprise, clouded with concern, or alight with a reluctant respect as his arms locked around her. _Once you own it, nobody can own you._

Kitty felt an inexplicable lump in her throat. How could she believe that he was her enemy, truly her enemy, if she could so vividly remember looking into those fathomless dark eyes and seeing a reflection of her own troubled… she supposed she couldn't call it anything but a soul. Nobody could fake that.

**

Lance whistled "We Will Rock You" to himself as he spun the combination on his new locker. It hadn't even been a full day, but his first impression of this place was a pretty good one. Teachers weren't tough, the work wasn't anything to make him sweat blood, and Todd Tolansky wisely pretended not to know him. He pulled his schedule, slightly crumpled and with one corner torn off, from his bag. "Chemistry," he muttered. "Room 317. Okay, we're in business." He removed the thick science book from the shelf, slammed the door shut, and turned to leave, only to find himself staring down into a very familiar pair of blue eyes. _Mystique told me, she _warned_ me, but I wasn't prepared for this. Not in a million years._ "Kitty?"

"Lance," she replied.

He recovered. "Live and in person," he drawled. Then, more seriously, "You're really here."

"I really am," she agreed.

She was still so _pretty_… but she no longer looked like she needed saving. Now there was a gleam of confidence in her eyes that he'd seen once before — in the office, when she had just realized that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't such a freak after all. And seeing it now only made her more attractive. He wanted to make sure she never lost faith again… _No, no!_ He couldn't let himself think this. This wasn't part of the plan.

"I don't think we have, like, anything to say to each other," she went on coolly. "I know you're totally not sorry for what you did, and I don't expect you to be." She didn't even give him a chance to say anything (and, again, what _would_ he have said?), just added, "I have to get to Chemistry."

Before he could stop himself, Lance asked, "Room 317?"

She glanced at her schedule. "Uh-huh." Glanced back up at him. "Oh, no."

"Oh, yes, pretty Kitty." The words felt so _right_. _No, this is bad! This is not good!_ "Don't be late." And he spun around sharply and stalked off down the hall. He didn't turn around to see if she was following him, but it was too late. He had realized what had gotten her fixed in his mind like that. Her world had fallen apart, her life had suddenly stopped making sense, and it had been he who she'd turned to. Because she'd believed in him. She'd needed him. She'd _trusted_ him. For the first time since he could remember, someone had actually trusted him.

And look how he'd repaid her.

_Nice going, Alvers,_ he congratulated himself as he hurried to class. _ Note to self: next time you decide to seek assistance from a fellow freak, don't ruin things by dropping the ceiling on her. And, if you can possibly help it, _definitely_ don't ruin it by falling in love with her._

Not that he planned to this time.

He tried not to watch her as she raised her hand to answer questions (correctly nine times out of ten), or stare at the way she tucked a long piece of hair behind her ear to keep it from hanging in her face as she took notes.

It was going to be a long year.


End file.
